The key, of course, is turning browsers into buyers, which is easier said than done. Customers are notoriously fickle, allowing distractions to quickly shift their interests from picking up shelved products or trying on trendy fashion. One warble from their smartphones could be enough to divert them from testing your newest trinkets.

While you can’t do anything about the phones in their hands — turning off free Wi-Fijust annoys patrons — you should definitely limit anything that could keep them from focusing on their retail finds.

When your floors smell awful and look worse, your merchandise never has a chance of making its way to a shopper’s home. Even loyal brand advocates will get in and out of your building as quickly as possible if they’re not wowed by the atmosphere. And the busier you are, the more matted your carpeting will be — especially with research that suggests just 1,000 customers in 20 days can bring in 24 pounds of outdoor waste. In other words, at the height of your sales, you could be losing customers down the road if you aren’t careful about keeping your carpets and tiles spotless.

Yet you don’t have to go around handpicking every tracked-in particle. And you can’t just trust your vacuum to do the job. Instead, you must catch mud, sand, silt, and more before it hits your aisles. How? The answer is with a protective entryway system.

At milliCare, we’ve helped countless retail partners around the country avoid nasty floors by trapping unwanted tagalongs (i.e., the 80 percent of carpet dirt that comes in via shoppers’ soles) at their store entrances.

Many retailers are surprised to realize their shops have three distinct entry point zones, each of which should be considered and set up uniquely for maximum dirt stoppage. They’re also amazed and pleased to hear that every $1 spent on a sophisticated zone entry system saves $10 in floor cleaning.

Zone No. 1: Outside

The first zone begins about 10 to 15 feet away from your entrance — and before kids and adults (not to mention guide pets) get to the main entryway of your establishment. At this zone, milliCare recommends a flooring surface that gently but firmly scrapes the bottoms of footwear and rolling equipment. This action keeps everything from tiny pebbles to rotting leaves from ever coming inside.

Zone No. 2: Indoors, Part I

As visitors broach the threshold, they immediately hit the second zone, which is the first few feet of the entrance. Our technicians typically install products like a recessed matwell and preventative coatings to offer mild scraping and absorbing. As a result, both dirt and moisture become trapped in one easy-to-clean location rather than scattered around the store.

Zone No. 3: Indoors, Part II

Immediately following the second zone is the final line of defense for the health and longevity of your carpets and hard flooring surfaces. Moisture consistently gathers here, so absorption is necessary. Many retailers have carpets in this area, and those carpets are well-served by being treated with a milliCare textile product designed to accept and — with our dry polymer cleaners — release moisture. If you have a harder surface in this area, you’ll want to work with your milliCare technician to develop a care plan that addresses how slippery it can get.

Imagine the relief you’ll feel knowing customers are looking up, not down, when they walk into your fresh, inviting environment. They’ll still be tethered to their electronics; that’s just the nature of doing business in the modern world. But they’ll definitely have one less distraction to keep them from making your cash register ring.